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Try riding a bicycle 105 kilometers to your parent’s house and see how that feels
In nice weather? Pretty good, as long as you are staying the night… And don’t mind being tired… And don’t need to bring much with you… And can wash your clothes there before you cycle back.
Ride Bike 5-10k to train station, take train for an hour or two with bike, ride Bike 5-10k to my parents house. I do it once or twice a month.
Take your bike on the train. That’s what I did last time I had somewhere to be that was >100 km away, and it was a fantastic trip
the thing is, this thread has everyone looking at things as sort of a cycling-only society. in actuality, any improvements to human transportation on a societal level would have to encompass a variety of transportation options. the current system in NA emphasizes cars above all else. if they were to transition away from car dominance, it would look like expansion of cycling, busses, and trains at minimum. they all would be expected to run in harmony with one another, meeting the various transportation needs such as distance, accessibility, etc.
and even in that society! bikes would definitely symbolize freedom. if your legs take you there, you can go.
Cuz putting on a raincoat or some warm clothes is too much for these weak ass people.
Well… that said, I’ve recently ridden by bike, and during the last few kilometers I barely could move one of my fingers, because I didn’t wear any kind of gloves or coat. It was cold as shit, but I still enjoyed the ride in the end, lol.
Yeah good gloves are for sure a must in the winter. The upside is that you have less bugs around when its cold :)
I get the sentiment, but a raincoat isn’t enough on its own. Sure, if you’ve got a 5 minute commute, you can get there quickly and spend minimal time in the rain.
A 20 minute commute in the pissing rain and you will be arriving soaked from head to toe. Not ideal for most. Yeh if you can shower at work then great, but then you’ve still got wet clothes you need to dry.
I’m very lucky that I have a 5 minute ride to work, all downhill, so unless the weather is biblical, I don’t really have an excuse for taking the car.
As someone who lives in Belgium where it is more rainy than the UK apparently, you just need 120€ of good biking gear (maybe 150 now with inflation)
I have some cheap Columbia rain pants, some cheap rain covers for shoes, a decent marmot raincoat, and a very cheap cover for my helmet. I bike 40-45 minutes each way to work.
I arrive to work dryer like that when it is very rainy, especially my feet, than when I have to park in a parking garage and walk 10-15 minutes. With an umbrella and raincoat.
I mean, it definitely isn’t fun at all biking in that, but unless it is really a downpour, it is not crazy.
I’m very lucky that I have a 5 minute ride to work, all downhill
That ride home though.
sounds like a great workout to destress from the day followed up with a nice shower at home
Yeah…
In The Nederlands people bike to school, which can be a bike ride of more than an hour away.
A raincote is not enough, but a rainsuit will do the job.
My issue with biking to work is the sweat …
Yeah exactly, try bicycling to work in the summer along the US gulf coast. You’ll either arrive at the office dead from heat stroke or soaking wet from sweat.
Sure, automobile-focused city planning is a problem, but let’s not pretend bicycles are a universal answer for all locales.
Just wear a proper bike jacket and rain pants. I’ve biked 30 minute commutes in pouring rain, and all I had to do when arriving at work was take off that outer layer.
Yeah. It’s impracticable for many jobs but it would be a shame to reject cycling out of hand because of potential weather issues.
I just wear bike shorts and jersey whatever the weather. I have work pants and shirt that I change into in the restrooms at work. There’s no shower. I have wet wipes and a little hand towel.
It’s pretty rare that it’s raining heavily enough for long enough that I can’t get to work between downpours.
By far the most important thing is mud gards on your wheels.
As I said, it’s not for everyone but I suspect that it’s not actually prohibitive for most people.
Don’t forget that maintenance is super cheap AND most people, with only the most basic tools, can do the work in their living room or even just on a sidewalk. And if I don’t get it right and the brakes don’t work perfectly I probably won’t fuckin’ die.
Hi, car owner here. I do all the work myself and it requires a fair bit of knowledge, expensive tools, space, and a childhood where I was never told I couldn’t do that work if I was thoughtful about it. That’s a high fuckin’ bar and requires a whole lot of privilege-oh there it is, too many people with privilege like to shit on those without and most of North America has dogshit for public transit or bike infrastructure and the “freedom of movement” with a car is all there but heavily artificial. Thanks auto industry and their lobbyists.
For the newer cars, the lockout of self repair is real. You need an EEPROM reader to get the diagnostics out, and only then using firmware found on a chinese forum. Fixing a part requires you to just order a replacement, and once you take apart the car and put the part in, you then need to tell the cars electronics to accept the part as part of its diagonistics or it wont fucking start, even if its non-critical and everything else is fine.
Yea that’s nearly 100% untrue, though. TPMS sensors can be a little weird but no one is changing tires themselves, only whole wheels for summer/winter.
Brakes, sparkplugs, tierods, suspension, all oils, many sound systems and/or parts thereof, filters, batteries, and even a whole headlight assembly are all things you don’t need to tell the car about. I put a backup camera in my car and it just figured it out all on it’s own since there was technically an option for it, and I wasn’t even using an OEM camera. And the car usually doesn’t even know what’s wrong but if there IS a code you can just use an OBD2 reader, they aren’t exactly expensive and they’re super easy to use.
You either have no idea what you’re talking about or are a mechanic that I’m glad I’m not taking my vehicle to. My 2015 BRZ that has literally none of that, not even TPMS sensors(I know 2015 is not that new anymore but people have been saying this shit for decades). This is exactly why I show people how it works, so that they can understand that it’s not that hard or complicated.
P.S.: if it’s a German vehicle just shoot yourself, it’ll be a much less painful experience than realizing that a bunch of high-paid engineers with great reputations among the laypeople are really just the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet. Also less physically painful, too. You can still do the work, they just put everything in terrible places and use bolts that have needlessly unique and more fragile heads. Fuck you, VW, you idiots.
I’m talking about my own woes with the cars that I have, roughly 2005-2010ish. My current is an automatic with a manual gearbox in the background driven by an RTOS. Getting diagnostics out and putting parts in are exactly as I described above.
It sounds like the car’s you deal with are fairly modern then, and it actually gives me hope to see that the newer stuff allows for more plug-n-play tech, since I was envisioning pure vendor lock down for the newer stuff.
I’m sorry I don’t follow what you’re saying with the transmission thing. Like, I do, but I don’t know what car you have or if that’s stock or anything but if you’re talking specifically some kind of highly specialized transmission then ok, but you led with saying that it’s every part in the car.
Ultimately, there’s just no possible way for a car to actually know 99% of what you’re gunna do to it even if they tried without astronomically expensive sensors and RFID chips and a whole lot of other stuff. The only thing that can really confuse them is doing stuff like completely removing the air filter so there’s too much air(which actually hurts performance most of the time anyway) or changing the timing to where it’d be running like garbage anyway. But oh boy can you still fuck up a lot of stuff without the car having a single clue that it’s about to fuckin’ die. Hell, you could set the toe angle to 10deg and put the wrong brake pads in backwards and it wouldn’t even notice.
Fun note: On a 2018 Jetta I had to make spacers for the rear brake caliper because we tried FOUR calipers and they were all wrong, ending up with something that was the right diameter but the wrong offset. The weekend was over and we just had to get it done, but it still works fine years later. Never buy a VW, they are just dogshit and a massive pain in the ass.
An AMT, a clutchless manual. They were in that sweet spot of semi-automatic cars before transmission went fully auto
What car is it, though?
Not to mention that modern cars contain multiple computers. Those computers include DRM, making it a felony to bypass them.
Certainly depends on the car. Also they aren’t so much full-fledged “computers” in that sense as electronics with simple relays and formulas to do stuff like make ABS work, supply the correct fuel/air mixture, or turn your automatic headlights on. Most anything the average person will be doing with their vehicle on a regular basis is completely outside of the electronics.
As far as having a right to work on your vehicle that you own goes, yes that’s absolutely a problem that you would be locked out of those systems but you probably won’t be anywhere near them, either. As far as bike vs car maintenance goes it doesn’t matter how easy or open the car is, shit’s still difficult for many people, time consuming, and incredibly expensive.
Note: I’m pushing back right now on that one point because the idea that modern cars somehow know everything you do is complete horseshit made up by people who are afraid of technology and act like you need a computer science degree to unplug a sensor and plug a new one back in.
Most anything the average person will be doing with their vehicle on a regular basis
That’s kind-of the point right? In the past it used to be common for people to do a lot more maintenance on their cars. These days because they’re so complex and involve locked down electronics, the average person will only do something like change their oil. Anything else requires taking it to the shop.
I’m specifically saying that quoted bit in regards to the fact that general maintenance is not complex or locked down. It wasn’t even the next sentence, it was the same sentence. No one except for enthusiasts are reprogramming their ECUs and after that there really isn’t much else getting in the way. If you put it all back how you found it the car has no clue. There’s almost nothing I can think of that’s actually locked out and when I ask for examples I don’t actually get anything back.
People just aren’t tinkerers as much these days and it’s not even really 100% their fault. They don’t have the money to buy tools/soace and DIY has actually gotten more expensive in many cases. People also don’t have the money to fix fuck-ups and lean towards caution, and they’re constantly told that these things are way harder than they are(like you’re doing here, actually), often by their parents who have enough money to just pay mechanics or plumbers or whoever. That said, people are starting to do more of that stuff again as paying for labour starts to get too much for our shitty salaries and outweighs the risk factor. Whenever I help a friend with cars, woodworking, luthiering, or literally anything I always get them to do it while I supervise so they can build confidence.
The biggest barrier to car repair is shit like the Germans having zero clue how to do their jobs and now you need a whole bunch of expensive specialty tools. Hell, doing the brakes on my friend’s BMW needed a 16mm wrench when nearly all packs of wrenches go straight from 15mm to 17mm. VWs are horrendous even with the right tools. Audi has “the service position” which is basically just removing the whole front of the car.
But for the most part brakes, oil, sparkplugs and wires, headlights, taillights, and changing wheels with the seasons are all easy. You can also do all the suspension work yourself with little more than a sturdy vice and maybe some spring compressors(if you’re clever you may not even need that and can still do it safely). Tie-rods are simple enough, though you need to buy or rent the tool for it. You can even replace broken fuel injectors without much issue. Serpentine belts are mostly accessible, especially if you have a Subaru, too.
TL;DR: You don’t know what you’re talking about. “Lockouts” only exist in highly niche cases and none of them have to do with basic maintenance.
Mechanical work comes pretty easy to me. I have no doubt I can fix virtually anything on my bike, short of things that require welding (we might see about that someday too…).
But cars mechanical work? Tried it some times. Frustrating as hell, don’t even want to touch it. I hate everything about cars, including the way they’re built.
I think it heavily depends on the make. Both my families mustang and f150 were terrible to repair. But my camry by comparison is a joy. I can tear it apart almost the whole way with a 10 and 12 mm in an afternoon.
I’ve done work in soft manufacturing, so i know how to use a wrench, but never worked in cars.
I acknowledge bikes are way easier BTW, can fix almost any problem in my bike in a few hours, just think repairability should be on people’s minds.
Trick is to buy a Subaru. Everything is just nice and simple, and there’s lots of space to do everything. I’ve only owned them but I’ve helped family and friends with all kinds of other makes and it sucked.
Except for the spark plugs. You need small asian hands for those.
But with the right tools they are dooable with normal freedom loving hands.
I do my own bicycle and auto repair, and the bicycle is way easier. Maintenance is:
- clean chain every so often (500 miles or start of the season) - get a chain cleaner tool thing ($10-20) and 50/50 Simple Green ($10 will last many years) and water, and then rinse, dry, and lube ($10 lasts years) - total process, 10 min?
- replace chain - $20 or so, plus a tool for $10 or so; do every 2k miles or so
- replace brake pads - $10-20
- tires ($50 for a fancy fire) and tubes ($10) - replace tires when bald, tubes when flat (or patch them), and get some tire levers ($5-10) to make it easier
For tools, you need a wrench set, and probably only like 2-3 sizes.
My yearly maintenance costs for all of our bikes (1 adult, two kids) combined is about $50. If that. You could also go to your local bike shop instead for about double that.
Exactly!
People over-state bicycle maintenance.
$50 and a couple YouTube videos gets you everything you need for the first few years of maintenance. You can get fancy with a bike rack thing, but I never bothered and I’ve been fine.
If you screw up, go to a bike shop and they’ll get you sorted for $50 or so, and they’ll probably teach you how to do it right if you ask nicely. If you have a bike coop, it might be free.
Bike maintenance is a matter of what kind of equipment you’re riding, how far, what conditions, how much you weigh and how strong you are. When I was putting 40 miles a day commuting, my cheap bike needed maintenance about once every 2-4 weeks depending on the weather and taught me that I fucking hate cleaning and repacking my bottom bracket.
The proliferation of Ebike caliber equipment changed a lot at least for durability and comfort.
I have never once touched my bottom bracket, what kind of weather you riding in?
Salted roads during the winter, dusty conditions in the summer. The salted roads when it’s too cold to rinse the bike would usually work its way in and the bearings would be creaking before spring.
Ew.
We only get snow about every other week here, and it’s rarely so cold that I can’t run a hose to rinse it off. I’m glad I haven’t had to deal with that nonsense.
Also this is a healthy maintence regime. In my experience most cyclists do nothing on that list except swapping flat tubes and their bikes still ride just fine, if not merely sub-optimally.
I wouldn’t call 500 miles between cleaning your chain as “healthy” maintenance.
True. If you’re just riding casually, you don’t really need any maintenance.
But if you’re relying on it every day, keeping up on maintenance can reduce costs long term. Dirty chains destroy the cogs (inexpensive) and drive train (expensive), stretched chains cause gear slippage and inefficient power delivery, worn tires increase chances of flats and reduce grip, and worn pads reduce stopping ability, which could result in nastier accidents.
If you’re riding a lot, keep up on maintenance, just like you would with a car. If it’s just occasionally like once or twice/month, you can probably get away with some neglect.
A bit of easy maintenance should be possible for everyone. Just clean and lube the chain every month. Check tire pressure every two to four weeks (depending on how fast they lose air).
And once a year do a complete checkup either by yourself or by a bike shop.You should easily get 10 years of life out of your bike. 20 years might be possible too.
Honestly have never done preventative maintenance on my bikes, only necessary repairs. Still thinking about repairing the shifter since I’ve been missing 1st gear for about 7-8? years now.
And if you have a bike with a belt you can replace all chain-related maintenance with “check if the belt looks weird maybe once a year”.
Yup. I recommend taking it in if it looks weird, it’s not worth learning to replace a belt since they’re usually good for many many years.
This was one of the things that surprised me the most about getting a bike. Parts are cheap. The work is easy. Knowing how to do it is valuable.
Get a quick link and a mason jar with mineral spirits to clean your chain. Easy peasy.
A quick tip on bike chains; if you are using lubricant you should never use heavy degreaser on the chain. The factory oil is the best lubricant and normal lubes don’t penetrate between links enough.
However, if you are going to degrease you chains, you should use paraffin wax instead of lube. I have an 11 speed chain with 3000+ miles and it’s only showing around 1% stretch. I don’t even use fancy bike specific wax, just food grade gulf wax. Another plus is the whole drive train is dry; doesn’t get your hands dirty if you need to remove a wheel, cassette, or derailleur.
Admittedly waxing the chain is a pain in the ass, but some of my chains are like $70 a pop so getting as much life from them is more important.
I literally lubbed my bike chain with olive oil once in a while for a couple of years whilst using it almost daily to commute to work.
One can get away with A LOT when it comes to bicycles.
I mean oil is oil, some are better as lubricants but all of them are going to reduce friction somewhat. When I rode fixies there were all sorts of weird home solutions being used in my group, but it didn’t really matter because those chains are bomb proof.
I can’t say for certain but if you tried the olive oil trick in a modern 10/11/12 speed drivetrain it would not last long. Not really because of an increase in friction but all of the dirt olive/vegetable/mineral oil attract. Lubricant is much thinner and doesn’t ‘hold’ dirt to the same degree, especially inside the roller links.
Wax improves the lifespan not by dramatically reducing friction, but by making dirt ingress virtually zero. The actual power gains are maybe a few watts, and that’s if you use special wax additives to further reduce friction.
Well, my bicycles have always been 2nd hand (or 3rd, 4th or 5th) or very cheap brand new ones because something I was going to leave tied to a post in the middle of the street whilst at work or shopping isn’t going to be something that when it eventually gets stolen it would really hurt my wallet (a Bicycle Philosophy I learned whilst living in The Netherlands) - so, run-of-the-mill bicycles with run-of-the-mill parts which I just regularly used, treated with no special care and just did some basic maintenance on.
They all lasted years being used and abused like that, all up until each was stolen (I kid you not!), except the last one which hasn’t been stolen yet.
So my point is that for one’s everyday cheap bicycle that one doesn’t really have any special emotional attachment to, olive oil on the chain is fine if one can’t be arsed to buy the proper materials ;)
My point was never that waxing chains is the perfect end-all solution. I originally replied to a person that said they degreased their chain and only got about 2-3k miles before needing to replace it. From my experience that’s due to stripping away the factory oil, and if you are degreasing anyways you are halfway to just waxing the chain.
If you want something to be dead set reliable modern group sets aren’t going to be your friend, no matter what you are using on the chain. A single speed chain with geared hub is going to be more reliable than pretty much anything else on the bike.
Waxing has real benefits but it’s not always worth it depending on where and how you ride. For instance, the dirt in my area is extremely dusty and destroyed my lubed MTB chain in about 2k miles. Waxing was a massive improvement and has already saved me from replacing $300 worth of chain and cassette.
It’s your bike though, and different strokes work for different folks. I fight against cars, not fellow bikers.
I have an 11 speed chain with 3000+ miles and it’s only showing around 1% stretch.
Wow, that’s a solid chain. I usually need to replace mine around 2000-3000, but my chains are like $20-30, and I don’t treat them very well (I stay on high gears on short climbs a bit too long).
I haven’t bothered with wax, maybe I should. I just do a decent job lubing everything a few times per year. I degrease (chain only, I’m careful around the derailleur and hub), rinse thoroughly, dry thoroughly, and then lube and wipe 2x. I don’t get any squeaks and it rides smoother after a cleaning, so I think I’m doing a decent job.
But I’ve heard wax is more of a one and done thing. Maybe I’ll try it the next time I replace my chain.
Oh I’m sure you’re doing a decent job and wax isn’t a perfect solution for everyone. I’m just saying that one of the reasons you may only get 2k miles out of a chain is the degreaser takes away the factory oil. When I was on lube I was getting about 1% stretch per 1k miles, but it also depends a lot on the drivetrain and what kind of riding you do.
I would definitely consider wax though, especially if you move up into 10, 11, or 12 speed drivetrains. Everything is so damn expensive on them that wax is well worth the extra work, not just the chain but my cassettes look almost new still.
Wax can flake off leaving that space unprotected. You have to check it more regularly than a lubed chain and dry it off after rain. It’s not uncommon for a waxed chain to rust. But a big pro is cleanness of the chain and you won’t get greasy hands.
Personally I keep using (eco-friendly) lube. Yes the chain gets dirty fast but I don’t care. :D
The roller links are what you want lubricated and protected, and wax stays in those places much better than liquid lubes. While some chunks will flake off there is a thin layer left behind, I ride near the ocean pretty frequently and had worse rust problems when I was using lube. Ofc whatever works for you is the best practice but wax has been very easy for me. I track my rides, after about 150 miles I re-wax the chain. I’ve never found that I have to check it more often, but I also ride steel frames so I don’t ride in the rain anyways.
I don’t ride in the rain
That’s probably the difference between us. I ride all-year all-weather.
Also shows a big difference in location between us. I only have like 2 weeks out of the year that I have to break out the indoor rollers because of rain.
Hope you stay safe though, I wish everyone could have the benefit of coastal desert weather.
Or just go for a belt instead of a chain and never worry about that again
inexpensive
lol, most bikes nowadays cost $1000. Also stolen every time so you have to call Uber. Also can’t get groceries or take the highway.
less likely to kill
More likely to be killed.
Also can’t get groceries
Americans unironically believe this. Pathetic
There are a few grocery stores in a 30 minute range. But none we could continue to afford long term.
The two which we can afford are an hour away. Including gass costs they are much cheaper long term.
Why i chose to live here? It was the only place we could realistically afford.
I am neither considered poor nor do i own/drive a car. (My partner already did before they met me) for perspective. We also have full jobs and kids. So very little time for small trips.
I blame urban planning and townhall. There is a small discounter who has made repeated requests to expand near our area with repeated refusals because “we already have to many (wealthy class) grocery stores.“
bruh you live in a food desert
Not if i had money. Theres a reasonably big store a 15 minute walk away and the few times i am there for an emergency and see the markup they demand for the same products my hate for capitalism grows.
can’t afford food
thinks isn’t poor
Its difficult to buy a week’s worth of groceries on a bike, which is often the norm in the US partly because of the car-centric nature. It’s a trip or ordeal to get groceries.
I routinely buy a week’s worth of groceries on my bike. Every week.
For a family or just for yourself? I guess I was thinking through the lens of buying for a whole family, which I know I would struggle to do on my bike.
I’m buying for two, but I’m also only loading one basket on my pannier rack. I could easily add another for double the capacity, along with maybe also a backpack. There’s also the possibility of using a trailer.
The average American spends $10k YEARLY on car. You could buy a new bike every month and still end up paying less.
I mean you could attach trailer on bike drive that way, it would be slower but works
Why would you go to highway when off-road is much better
Or baskets to carry a reasonable amount of groceries.
You had me curious so I just went on Facebook marketplace and searched “bike”
The first screen of results was all bikes under £100
You realise you don’t need to buy a carbon fiber Tour de France bike to get around a town, right?
Sure, but you should get something better than a big box bike so it doesn’t suck to ride. Get what you can afford, but you’ll be so much happier with something $500+ from a decent brand than Walmart crap.
$1000 is actually pretty inexpensive for a quality bike. Carbon fiber tends to start around $3-4k, and is totally not worth it IMO, just get a quality aluminum or steel bike.
You can get pretty good deals under 500, at least here in Europe ($ to € relatively close).
A local shop here for example has some fully serviced and functional, partially modernized, 90s mountain bikes between 200 to 400 eur. And that’s with a trend tax, since those are getting somewhat popular nowadays for how great commuters they make
Meh, disagree. The bike I liked the most was the one I bought used for 15€ from a dude down the street, brought it to the old grandpa who fixes bikes for cheap for fun, paid him 35€ for some maintenance, check the gearbox, new brake saddles, oil everything up.
50€ in total, awesome city bike, although a bit heavy and without all the fancy shit, but I just left it chained to a lamp in the street, nobody wants to steal a 50yo bike and even if, it was just 15€. When I moved to a different city I sold it to my neighbor for 15€ again. He still uses it from what I hear.
You probably got a quality bike for a steal then. I mention a price range because you’re much less likely to get something that’ll fall apart in a few months.
As long as you avoid big box brands (Huffy and whatnot), you’ll be fine. You can get a decent used Surly or Giant or something for $200-300 if you know what to look for, but that’s also the range for crappy big box bikes new, so I increase the number to $500.
not really, for daily commutes any piece of junk that brakes and rolls will do. rode only ~50 bucks bikes for the last five-ish years, old city bikes are indestructible
How far was your commute? If it’s like 2-3 miles, yeah, you should be fine, because you could just walk when something breaks. If it’s 5-10 miles, that’s a lot less feasible.
My commute went through some farmland for a few miles, far from the bus lines, so having something more reliable was more important. I spent about $500 and put thousands of miles on it over the first few years of ownership. The only issues I had were flat tires, so I put on denser tires and that went away (Schwalbe Marathon Plus). I would average 15-20mph, depending on wind, and I don’t race or anything like that.
A big box bike might work okay for a while, or maybe the person who put it together did it wrong. Even if it’s put together right, they use crappy components so it’ll be a giant pain to ride vs a better bike. They’re heavy, have lots of friction in the drive train, the tires are crap, and shifting often breaks after a year or so.
Even with a $500+ bike, you’ll save money, and probably on your first year if it’s replacing a car or bus. Do yourself a favor and get a lower end bike from a quality brand.
My local bike coop is full of very dependable, freshly tuned bikes that average around $150, built with love and care by expiriend mechanics. If you have issues with your bike, those same mechanics will guide you through the process of fixing it and give you access to every tool you could possibly need to do so, all for free or suggested donation.
Oh yeah, if you have a local coop, do that. Just avoid stores like Walmart and Target.
Some are actually decent from Walmart now, specifically their Ozark trail lineup. Basically the current CEO is really into trail riding, so they sell mountain bikes that are actually good for $400.
Huh, I haven’t tried them for years, but every Huffy I’ve seen is utter crap. Maybe the Ozark line is acceptable to get started.
That said, if you’re into mountain biking, the entry price is ridiculous, with $1000 being considered “borderline crap” for a hard-tail (no shocks). I probably wouldn’t trust a Walmart bike on downhill MTB (worried about tire slippage or the chain popping off), but it should be fine around town and on some gentle trails. Even so, I recommend a hybrid or “city” bike of you’re mostly sticking to pavement, they don’t have shocks to sap your power and they’re super simple to maintain. $500 gets you a great hybrid from a good company, and usually free service for a year or two.
I mean, I got used carbon full suspension mountain bike for $500 used a few months ago, there are plenty of decent hardtail bikes lightly used for $400-500 in my area.
I used to get all of my groceries by bike I did this by adding 2 baskets to the sides of the rear rack and one to the front and wearing a backpack if I am getting a lot of stuff larger items can be attached to the rack with bungee cords
You might be surprised by how much you can Carry by bike and this wasn’t even a cargo bike either
You can ride your bike on many highways in the USA at least. Generally you cannot on the freeway, but there are some exceptions — in California there are requirements about bike accessibility which means that certain segments of a freeway may be bike accessible.
If you live far from a store then groceries are a problem unless you use a trailer, but if you live in a city it’s totally reasonable to use a bike (or walk) for your weekly groceries.
And you can get a new Trek FX for under $600, and that’s just from a quick search. Yes of you want Ultegra or better and a carbon frame, the sky is the limit.
lol, do you think $1000 is expensive compared to a $30k car? I ride daily and have never had to “call uber” because my bike got stolen. I get groceries on my bike every week. Why would you want to take the highway on a bike? You know what’s most likely to kill? Heart disease from sitting on your fat lazy ass
Most bikes now cost about $100 brand new at the store unless you’re buying some specialty shit. Less likely to kill is if both people are on bikes, should have been obvious.
$100 means you’re buying Walmart crap. Don’t do that, they are super poor quality, which means they’re as likely to break as get you to your destination.
Buy from a quality brand and spend $500-1000 or so. You’ll be much happier and it’ll last longer.
Because showing up to a client meeting dripping in sweat on a 103 degree day is considered to be poor form. Because I got a new job and don’t have an extra two hours in my day to ride a bike back and forth, and moving isn’t in the cards. Because I have to carry a couple kids and all the crap the goes along with them.
I dare you to travel on your own bicycle in the depths of winter across the USA in the same timeframe as a car.
I dare you to cross the Atlantic in a car.
You might need to rendezvous with another vessel mid-trip for gas, but amphibious cars do exist.
Best of luck my dude
Eh, I did that for a couple years in Utah and it was largely fine. When the snow got nasty, I took the bus.
That was back when my commute was 10 miles (16km) with a segregated bike path the whole way. My new commute is more than double that, so I drive. But if we weren’t so car centric, things would be more compact and I wouldn’t have this nasty commute.
we weren’t so car centric, things would be more compact and I wouldn’t have this nasty commute.
Hi, a different commenter here. I love public transportation (time to sit and read! meet interesting people!) and dislike cars, but realistically we often have other considerations that city design alone wouldn’t solve.
- My most recent commute was 65 miles through a rural area – I had to live in town A to support a family member and my job was in town B.
- Before that I was in an urban area, but had to live near the hospital area for my BFF’s sake, and my job was out in the suburbs 18 miles away. No bike lanes, and public transportation took 2-3 hours one way. (and this was in a city with relatively good public transportation.)
Now I WFH so that’s cool. But the experience made me realize how complex is the problem of transportation and urban design. I mean, I agree with the fact that bikes are awesome and we need better public transportation in the US, though.
I am curious, how much time did it take to make those 18miles (28km?) by car? I have just checked in my city, that has really nice public transportation (Tallinn), and to cross essentially the whole city (~20km, a route that nobody does, so probably not very well connected) on Monday at 9am it takes 59m by public transport (2 buses) and 40m by car (it takes 30m generally, but traffic). 2-3h or 2/3 times that to do 50% more distance looks like public transportation is not that good, did you mean “good for US standards”?
Yeah, I appreciate that it’s complex, but in the US we prioritize cars instead of people.
A properly designed system will account for lots of transportation options. This means:
- force cars to go around city centers - prevents gridlock in downtown, and improves transit and walkability/cyclability downtown; enforce with car-free zones
- buses and bike paths to connect the different parts of the city
- trains to connect cities
- highways and roads connecting smaller towns
If you go to smaller towns, a car is your best bet. If you’re going downtown, a train should be more efficient, and a car should be workable. If you live in or near a city, a bike should be sufficient.
We used to have one car because I could bike to work, but now we need too, and only because of the 2 days I commute to the office. And the worst part is that there’s a train line near my house that I could totally take to work if they actually built the line they’ve been talking about for decades. But instead of building that line (connects to a larger system, including a stop at a major sports stadium), we expanded a highway (didn’t fix traffic) and we’re building a new highway (might help somewhat). Most of those cars are traveling along the proposed train route (it runs parallel to the highway), yet the highway gets priority.
I propose we rethink transit in terms of moving people instead of cars.
Yeah agreed it’s an interesting problem bc it has so many components… unfortunately when we try to get one part of it implemented, people say: it’s not going to solve the whole problem so why bother. I’m still learning about it and so are most people. But I think even the most truck-loving person has an older relative who can’t drive any more, or maybe they themselves can’t drive bc of a DUI or something, so there’s always an opening for learning more.
Yup. Fortunately there are professions for solving these types of problems, so we need to stop demanding specific solutions and let them do their job.
It turns out adding more lanes often makes things worse, and the better solution is to replace cars with higher density transit, so your truck loving friend will likely be better off if we invest in transit instead of highways. I want to take transit to work instead of adding to traffic, but that currently takes 4x as long as driving (2-ish hours each way). You should absolutely be able to drive if you want, and the more practical other modes of transportation are, the less cars will be on the road since a lot of people would rather ride than drive.
Failed the brief on at least two counts. First, you took a bus when it got “nasty” - thus proving automobiles are more adaptable, and thus superior. Second, a 10 mile commute is not across the USA - granted the terrain in Utah is varied, but not coast-to-coast varied. You also didn’t put up your times vs. average car travel time for the route, so I’m going to assume that your average speed was lower, and your average time was also longer.
50% of the Boston workforce commutes by train every day, and that’s with how notoriously bad the Boston T is considered. 100 years ago, before the advent of car centric urban design, the Boston T was twice the size it is today, servicing towns all over eastern Massachusetts. A big part of the reason that a car is your best option for pretty much anything is because our country was redesigned to make it necessary. We used to have streetcar towns here - trolley systems that ran up and down the major hubs in towns - that they straight up paved over the rails for, making things less accessible in the name of selling cars and gasoline. They’re also a major contributing factor in the death of small businesses and the rise of the giant box stores at the edge of town that you have to drive 20 minutes to in order to go food shopping.
Your argument is in bad faith, and your reasoning is disingenuous. Pretty much every large town west of the Mississippi grew around a train station. Nobody is taking away your freedom to sit in traffic on your morning commute. But imagine how much better that commute would be if you could take 50 cars off the road per bus or hundreds per light rail train. The average commuter car in the US has 1.2 people in it. If you make it so that drivers don’t have to deal with walkers and bikers, and vice versa, everybody wins.
Was this all an attempt to “gotcha” people to prove that cars on free roads go faster and protect you better from elements than bikes? I mean, yeah of course they do. This doesn’t make them “superior” in an absolute way because superiority depends on parameters. Take cost, health benefits, maintenance costs, environmental impact and bikes would be superior.
Can’t talk about US, but in Italy the daily average by car was between 10 and 15 kilometers I seem to remember, that is 30-40min by bike at a slow pace. For that I would 100% say that provided infrastructure exists, bikes are a largely superior transportation vehicle compared to everything else. If you talk about traveling between islands I would say a boat is more efficient, or if you have to travel 500km I would say planes are. Superiority depends on the specific evaluation, that’s my point. For the kind of coast to coast trip you mentioned, in winter, I would say trains can be vastly superior to cars, for example, and they can be combined with bikes.
a 10 mile commute is not across the USA
Because you don’t cross a continent by bike or car, you do it by fast or night train in which you can take your bicycle.
Or by plane if you’re in a hurry.
Took me 40 min each direction (best time was 30 min), car took 20-30 min (very little traffic) and the bus took 40+ min. But I could also skip the gym since I already got my exercise for the day, so I consider it a wash. With an ebike, I could cut that almost in half (legal top speed is 28mph, but nobody enforces that, so I could probably go 30-35mph). I average about 15-20 mph, depending on wind.
10 miles is really far for a bike commute though. If you live somewhere bike centric, you’d probably only go 3-5 miles, at which point the time difference is negligible and probably faster by bike because of no parking issues.
And the bus was only necessary because we don’t plow bike lanes. With proper infrastructure, I wouldn’t need the bus at all. My coldest commute was ~5F, and layers kept the ride completely comfortable, so the issue was literally only the lack of infrastructure.
My point isn’t to say the US is currently completely bikeable, my point is that with proper infra, it could be. We don’t have as nasty of weather as the NE and MW, but we do get low temps and snow, and I’ve seen madlads cycling in the MW in crazy weather.
I dare you to travel on your own car in the depths of winter across the USA in the same timeframe as a airplane.
One thing people don’t seem to grasp in many different situations is the vastness of the US. Most states are bigger than a lot of countries. You can fit several European countries into some of the biggest US states.
True, but when I lived in the US the majority of my trips weren’t cross-state, but 1-10 miles which can totally be cycled if the infrastructure was there.
But demonstrate the incontrovertible need for a car during one’s regular commute through an average modern city. And I’m even offering the main exception - busses and taxis/ride sharing/whatever the current nomenclature, as I consider public transportation to be its own independent thing, unrelated to Cars.
I think the people who would enjoy such a venture via bike have or are already doing it, the rest of us would just like to be able to ride the bike through the city without having to play Frogger with three lanes filled with enraged lumps of cortisol.
I live in a city of 60,000 people in Colorado. The closest train station is 15 minutes away, by car. There is a bus that will take me to the train station, but it’s an hour to walk to the closest one and the bus comes once an hour, 6 am to 7 pm, M-F. I can’t afford to spend 4 hours on a quick trip to the grocery store and never leave my house on the weekends.
There are bike lanes on the main roads (4-6 lanes 50+ mph traffic). More than half the vehicles around here are massive jacked up trucks and SUVs. I have a bike, but do not have a death wish. It regularly snows, making bike riding a no-go for most of 4 months of the year.
I am very much in favor of reducing car traffic. But it’s not feasible for so many people with the way cities are designed and the lack of public transport.
I mean, that isnt really an argument against public transit and bike infrastructure, its just an argument that the way to do it isnt to just tell people to stop driving and expect it to happen, one has to redesign cities to make these options feel like the safe and natural choice.
This was my thought as well, goes to show we need better long-range public transportation!
And bikes should be used for more granular destination points, once the bulk is covered via whatever works best as public transport in a given area.
we need better long-range public transportation!
That’s what trains are for.
What you actually need is a different city design. Office and housing need to be within 2-3 miles not 20-30, then bikes, buses and stuff become reasonable alternative modes of transportation. Even buying groceries could be done without a car.
But the US of A chose to move housing out of the cities into suburbs dozens of miles away. As long as you don’t change that you’ll stay car-dependent. It’s just too far.
It will also help to build more apartments that are cheap to rent. That increased concentration of people will make it possible for small local markets, restaurants, etc. to survive. Cost of living should also go down a bit because you’ll reach more people with less infrastructure. That’ll also increase tax revenue for the city. It’s win-win for everyone.
Fair enough, I’m all for trains! And I agree, they really do have the most potential out of pretty much everything else (to be fair, they each excel at different things) in terms of people over distance.
And I get what you mean about the structures, starting to see the same tendencies over here as well. Add to that the fact that our average is about 0.6 cars per person and growing, or something like that, plus an outdated infrastructure which is basically frozen due to being surrounded by historical buildings (and god forbid we do anything with those, ours is to wait and watch them slowly crumble!), and you have traffic jams in even the smaller cities and towns. It’s fucking horrid, is what it is…
Plus every new neighborhood which is added around the city is either a new residential area filled with tumor-like arrangements of apartment buildings with, of course, insufficient infrastructure to support said 0.6 cars per capita, so the possibility of extending a public transport line of any sort to that area is basically nulliffied from the start. The main bus line for the residential area in which I lived in my old city used to run along the industrial traffic lanes - you’d frequently see lines of fully loaded semi trucks waiting for the bus to finish transfering passengers. Because they had nowhere else to put it, they just sold the area to developers without a sexond thought given to how they’d actually connect the area to the rest of the city.
And to get back to the trains, we actually have a decently extensive railway network, but all it’s seen for the past few decades has been basic maintenance, and our trains are the same. I mean, most of our engines are from the Communist era and most of our train cars are hand-me-downs from Germany - and they’re really nice train cars, honestly, the sleeping cars have wood paneling, in-cabin grooming sink, and actual mattresses, they’re a splendid bit of engineering - and they start looking like hammered shit maybe half a year after being introduced. I had to make 12 900km trips by train throughout the country last year and I’d say I ended up with an immune response after at least eight or nine of them, felt flu-y for a couple of days. And, yeah, this is also a major problem with the education and level of wealth around here, but they really don’t bother actually trying to maintain a semblance of cleanliness.
So of course everyone buys one and a half cars and lugs that hunk of metal all around the place.
But the US of A chose to move housing out of the cities into suburbs dozens of miles away. As long as you don’t change that you’ll stay car-dependent. It’s just too far.
Agreed, that right there is the problem. But it wasn’t just a one-time choice it’s an ongoing decision: (A) inexpensive large house in the suburbs/rural area or (B) more expensive small apartment in the city. Personally I choose B but I have relatives who live in rural areas (large houses, huge yards, 1 car per person) who think I’m crazy.
Checkmate liberals-tier comment. Why did you even post this?
Initially, for shits and giggles. I can’t ride a bike and I also can’t drive, so I’m stuck on foot.
Traveling across the entirety of the US by car in the middle of winter sounds fucking miserable. That’s what trains are for.
Trains only travel along previously laid rails, at specific times. Plus, you’ll need to rent a car at the other end to get anywhere. Better to take your own car and have personalized comfort the whole way. Also, yes, it does sound miserable. But if you’re in a car, turn up the heater, turn on the radio or your favorite music, and just vibe while driving safely.
Cars also travel along previously laid paths. I mean, technically there are off road ones that dont have to, but unless youre on your own land trying to get from one place to another without following the roads wont go so well.
Off-road travel, even in a car not explicitly made for it, is usually safer than traveling a derailed train. But I get your point.
But if the cities were built for people rather than cars, you wouldn’t need to rent a car at your destination. And trains run often if they haven’t been critically underfunded for decades. And you can’t really drive safely, even if you’re a perfect driver, someone can run you off the road. Trains are orders of magnitude safer.
Not everyone lives in cities in the US and even then they are really spread out. It’s the one thing I think the world doesn’t comprehend about the US; we’re spread way out.
Where are you going in rural america that you need to rent a car if you arent already living there?
Family, maybe.
Then… they can get their family to come pick’em up in their pickup truck.
My brother in christ, the reason we got this spread out in the first place was a robust national network of passenger rail lines.
It isnt like the rest of the world doesnt have rural areas, unless one lives in like singapore or something. Something like 80% of the US population lives in urban areas, and most trips arent trips between cities except perhaps for those that are close to one another anyways. So even if one accepts that rural areas are car centric by nature, that still leaves the vast majority of the population that isnt affected by that. The buildings within cities being spread out over a wide space making transit less efficient is a failure of city design rather than something fundamental and unchangeable about the US, we have a fairly serious housing shortage anyways, if we really wanted to decrease car dependence we could absolutely build up denser housing in urban cores to shift the population over time into areas that allow for more efficient transportation.
we could absolutely build up denser housing in urban cores to shift the population over time into areas that allow for more efficient transportation.
Sounds like prison
No, it really doesn’t, unless one simply does not know what “prison” means. Improving access to transportation is entirely counter to the point of a prison, given that the primary characteristic of a prison is being hard to leave.
🤡
Or you know, just how cities work…
Not everyone lives in cities in the US
But 80% do, so what’s your excuse for refusing to solve the problem for the vast majority? The “and even then they are really spread out” is not it, BTW.
Money for the most part. It’s cheaper to own, no HoA or Condo association. Not to mention it’s quieter.
- “'Murica big” has fuck-all to do with anything
- Owning a single-family house in the suburbs only seems cheaper than owning a condo because single-family houses are massively subsidized. You’re a welfare queen and you don’t even realize it.
- Cars are the things that make cities loud in the first place.
If you happen to enjoy that kind of thing and aren’t on a tight timeline it is fun as hell. Like a mechanical version of hiking.
Like hiking, most people don’t enjoy it or aren’t really up to the challenge.
Like a mechanical version of hiking
I can’t wait to describe driving this way to a friend so that we can both share in the laughter I’m enjoying right now.
Seriously though, with the right kind of terrain and conditions driving is a real challenge. If you have never driven off road through fields in wet, snowy conditions where stopping is likely to mean being unable to start going again and needing to guage how fast to approach a slope to maintain momentum it might sound silly.
Anyone who has never driven on an unpaved road might find it funny. Like how anyone who has only ridden a bike on paved roads might not understand the fun of going mountain biking off a defined path might find that funny.
Offroading on a motorcycle is more fun than a four wheel car most of the time, but all of things can be fun.
I own a lifted hatchback with gravel tires that I occasionally take down timber trails to camp or shoot. That’s maybe why I understood what you meant. But the way it came across, it just soubded like you need to go hiking more :P
Yeah, I was going for the ‘crossing difficult terrain challenge’ part and probably should have said it was like hiking from your couch.
I think the guy above you was just talking about regular driving on the freeway, not overlanding in a 4x4.
The reason you can’t is much more about infrastructure than weather, especially within cities
Source: I live in Scandinavia and everyone bikes even when it’s cold
Just out of curiosity, do you have snow tires for bikes or are the paths cleared well enough not to worry about it?
Where I live we often get mixes of sleet and ice along with the snow and since it is sporadic throughout winter we do a pretty mediocre job of funding the removal. If we didn’t have so many wide roads it probably wouldn’t take as much effort.
I run studded tyres during winter, but the city also uses a clearing technique where they first clear off all of the snow from the bike lanes and then salt them to prevent ice. This kind of wreaks havoc on your components through corrosion, but leaves the lanes highly usable throughout winter.
I use the studded tyres as an insurance policy against any poorly cleared spots. They are usually pretty good about it, but sometimes the weather will just be bad.
I’ve been told that fat bikes do better on full snow, but I’ve never ridden one myself so I can’t confirm it.
Here not just bikes talks about winter cycling in Olou, Finland. The answer is yes, the city needs to manage the lanes during winter instead of letting it be acceptable to push snow in bike lanes or leave them uncleared. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
This was exactly what I was going to link.
Certainly in my city bike lanes and sidewalks are cleared and salted before main roads. Though we just had the warmest January on record so a lot less snow to think about 😬
Even in the US, there are places that are bike friendly in the winter. Minnesota has a big winter biking culture, both for commuting and for recreation.
That’s impossible and no one is implying that bikes should replace other modes of transport for interstate travel. However, I bike commute in winter in Wisconsin and it takes less time than riding the bus. Driving a car is faster than my bike commute, but only marginally so.
Then bikes are not more freeing than cars. The means of easy, unscheduled, interstate mobility should be the American symbol of freedom. That’s not a bicycle.
I love how you explicitly defined your requirements to be exclusive to car travel. Riding on a good train or bus network is incredibly easy and affordable in many places, speaking from experience.
The auto industry will fight tooth and nail to avoid anything that impacts their revenue generation.
A related question: why is the “big tough guy” image a guy in a truck?
Like, you push a pedal with your foot to make your vehicle go vroom vroom. A granny could do that.
Surely a tough guy is a guy who is straining huge muscles to make a bike hit 50 km/h. A skilled guy is one who can maneuver his bike down a narrow mountain-bike track.
Imagine looking back in history and seeing a dude being carried around in a sedan chair and thinking that was the ideal image of masculinity, rather than the surely jacked dudes carrying him.
Bikes are awesome. I would love to experience the joy of waking up in the morning and riding a bike to work. No traffic, healthy and all that good shit. I live, however, 40min away from my work by car and 3 hours by bike, one way. I dont see this changing in the foreseeable future so my idea of freedom has to be something different.
> hills
shifters
Free cardio, what’s not to love? E-bikes are an option for those that don’t love it
That makes it more fun
Climbing good, builds muscle
mechanical advantage
Yeah but uphill tho :/
weeee!!
I am speed
huh? i mean ig but why not just walk your bike? its not any different than walking besides having your hands on the bars instead of ur pockets or whatever lol, and it gives you an opportunity to change positions and stretch your legs
Yeah that’s what I end up doing sometimes on the long hills haha, it kinda sucks living in a really hilly city
Collisions can still kill or injure you badly if the other person is driving a car
Also if you accidentally hit someone at speed and their head cracks open on a hard surface they could die
So I’m not entirely sure about that claim
With the average commute to work in the US being 16 mi one way, The average speed of riding a bicycle in the city being 15 mph, that makes the average commute to work just over an hour long (over 2x the 27 minutes it takes in a car). If you work in a job that requires you to be presentable, then you need to add another 15 minutes to take a quick shower and change (if your workplace even has such facilities).
Obviously, this changes with e-bikes, but there’s not really a practical difference between most modern e-bikes and an electric moped.
Cop pulls you over on a bicycle:
“Drivers License and registration please”
“I don’t need those, I’m not driving this bicycle, I’m travelling on it officer. Private conveyance. I don’t contract with DMV.”
“Right you are sir, have a nice day!”
Why haven’t the sovcits cottoned on to this loophole?!
Where are you all buying bike that don’t hurt your wallet to replace? I guess there are Walmart bikes but I’ve literally had a huffy fall apart while in motion.
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